Fighting to the last Afghan

In the 1980s when the Red Army refused to accept defeat in its 10-year war with the Afghan mujahideen, Americans used to chide the Soviets for wanting to fight to the last Afghan. Recognising the situation as a “bleeding wound”, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev decided to end this misadventure and withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. But there is no American leader yet with Gorbachev’s vision and courage to recognise reality and withdraw American troops from the Afghan quagmire after more than 15 years of fighting.

Instead, American generals are again making demands for more money and troops from a receptive and purblind US administration and Congress while Afghans on both sides are dying. Failing to draw lessons from the Soviet (and earlier British) experience, the Americans also seem ready to fight to the last Afghan. While this will further hurt the US in terms of blood and treasure, it will further devastate what little is left in Afghanistan with negative consequences for Pakistan, already suffering from terrorism, drugs and refugees emanating from our western neighbour.



It is time the Americans realised the futility of their Afghan folly which was doomed from the very start for several reasons, none of which have been addressed or rectified. To begin with, they have been tactically fighting the wrong kind of war. Using massive firepower and relying on body counts cannot defeat an enemy that is dispersed and employs guerilla warfare tactics instead of engaging a classical conventional war. This asymmetrical war is best understood by the futility of using million dollar cruise missiles and drones against mud huts costing a few dollars that can be rebuilt overnight. The essential problem for the US is that is wants to avoid casualties and body bags taking dead American soldiers home. The Taliban, on the other hand, are fighting for their country and have a vast reservoir of fighters to die for the cause.

At the strategic level as well, the American approach has been misguided. Instead of spending billions of dollars on the military option, even a fraction spent on development efforts to generate employment and growth in Afghanistan could have generated greater support for the US. Winning Afghan hearts and minds was more important than bombing hospitals, marriage parties, jirgas and villages — killing thousands of innocent men, women and children.



To make matters worse, Americans could not decide whether they were in Afghanistan to defeat terrorism or engage in nation-building. They have kept switching from one to the other with neither being achieved. Moreover, while the latter was a worthy cause, the policy pursued was wrong. Instead of recognising the de-centralised nature of the Afghan polity due to tribal, ethnic, linguistic and sectarian differences, especially the deep-rooted historical animosity between Pashtuns and Tajiks, the US promoted a highly centralised governance structure based on a unitary Constitution. Even worse, Pashtun presidents, Hamid Karzai and now Ashraf Ghani, with little Pashtun tribal support, were left to fend off powerful non-Pashtun rivals in Cabinet and among provincial warlords, none of whom were disarmed. This has been compounded by the US failure to contain the drug trade that has grown more than a 1,000 per cent during the American presence, filling the coffers of corrupt officials, the warlords, the Taliban and the terrorists.

Even worse, the US has been fighting the wrong enemy with the support of the wrong friends. From the start, the focus should have remained on fighting terrorism by al Qaeda and now Da’ish. But the US has carried this war to the Taliban without distinguishing between the two opponents whose characteristics and objectives are different. The Taliban are seeking to end foreign occupation and do not have an agenda beyond their own country. al Qaeda and Da’ish are not only opposed to the US and its allies in Kabul but the Taliban as well. It is worth recalling that much before 9/11, the Taliban actually inherited al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden who had been given sanctuary by none other than Ahmed Shah Massoud’s Tajik government. In the present circumstances when Da’ish is re-grouping in Afghanistan’s Kunar and Nangarhar provinces, attacking Taliban targets along with cohorts of Pakistan’s TTP, supported by the governments in Kabul and New Delhi, there is a common enemy threatening the US as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Russia and China. Washington needs to wake up to this reality.



But Washington is in cahoots with the wrong friends — with non-Pashtun Afghans who are unacceptable to the Afghan majority and are actually sponsoring, with India, Da’ish-TTP terrorists; and India which has the sole aim of keeping the Afghan pot boiling to de-stabilise Pakistan’s western border and use Afghan soil to stoke terrorism and insurgency in Pakistan. These “allies” are taking the US on a one way road to defeat.

The US needs to decide whether to fight or talk to the Taliban. Fifteen years of war at full strength has failed to overcome them. A few thousand more American troops will make no difference. And it’s not possible to fight and talk at the same time. Perceptive Americans like special envoys (the late) Richard Holbrooke and his last successor, Richard Olson, recognised this but were opposed by the Pentagon and the CIA. But other major powers like Russia and China recognise the greater threat posed by Da’ish to their security and have started to engage with the Taliban to find a lasting solution. But American hubris, which was on full display lately by the missile attack on Syria, has not only led to rejection of the Russian initiative to promote an Afghan settlement but also to accusations of Russian support to the Taliban. Washington will find that using Islamabad as a scapegoat and whipping boy for its failure in Afghanistan will be different from blaming Moscow, which is bound to retaliate. If this happens, America’s last 15 years in Afghanistan would seem like a walk in the park.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 29^th, 2017.

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